Blue Dollar Question

[Arizona Guy]

I'm planning a trip to BA in March with my wife and have a couple of questions regarding money exchange. I assume you cannot get the blue rate at the airport and I will likely be arriving without any pesos. What are my options? Do I just have to exchange a small amount at the official rate?

And when returning to the U.S, if I have pesos leftover, what rate do I get when exchanging them back for dollars? Does the blue rate exchange work in reverse? Somehow I doubt the airport will pay me the official exchange rate when converting pesos to dollars.

We are also planning on renting a car for travel into the province and maybe Entre Rios. Most car rental quotes are quite steep but I did find a lower quote from Tango Rent a Car...because the quote is in pesos. I hope I can pay for the car in cash with pesos. Does anybody have any experience with this company?

 

[gsi16386]

Hey Arizona Guy, everyone accepts dollars, you just have to negotiate an exchange rate if you're going to utilize them with a taxi. Then I would head on down to Calle Florida to find someone to exchange the rest of your dollars at the blue rate. There are tons of guys out there looking to exchange money, so they shouldn't be hard to find.

As far as exchanging them back, no one wants pesos so you're going to have a hard time finding someone to exchange them back. If they do it'll be rather cheap, so just be careful with how much you initially exchange money and try to spend as much of the pesos as you can.

I'm not too sure about the rental car situation. Hopefully others on this forum can help you out. Good luck and happy travels!

 

[GS_Dirtboy]

You can withdraw some pesos at the airport ATM using your credit/debit card - at the official rate of course.

 

[Rich One]

I'm planning a trip to BA in March with my wife and have a couple of questions regarding money exchange. I assume you cannot get the blue rate at the airport and I will likely be arriving without any pesos. What are my options? Do I just have to exchange a small amount at the official rate?

And when returning to the U.S, if I have pesos leftover, what rate do I get when exchanging them back for dollars? Does the blue rate exchange work in reverse? Somehow I doubt the airport will pay me the official exchange rate when converting pesos to dollars.

We are also planning on renting a car for travel into the province and maybe Entre Rios. Most car rental quotes are quite steep but I did find a lower quote from Tango Rent a Car...because the quote is in pesos. I hope I can pay for the car in cash with pesos. Does anybody have any experience with this company?

Rent the car at the airport and once at your hotel the concierge will direct you to a place for blue rate exchange. Make sire you have a 100 pesos for the tolls. Withdraw $100 US, form the ATM at airport, in pesos, to save your New, clean, unmarked $100 US bills...!!!!

 

[internationalguy]

The car rental will require a credit card. They authorize it (not charge it)for about 3,000 pesos (at official rate, say like 500 bucks) plus the cost of the rental. Once you take the car back they will let you pay in pesos and they will release the money they held. They ABSOLUTELY need a credit card in case they need to charge you for any tickets you may have not told them about. They did offer an alternative which was to double the deposit and to have them hold it for 30 days before they gave it back. It's entirely up to you. The rates in pesos are not as bad as I thought but they're not cheap for sure. You need to get mid to upper range cars because their basic models are so bad that you'd never see cars like that in the US.

 

[Arizona Guy]

Thanks to everyone for the info....Looking forward to our trip.

 

[ARbound]

In March, at the current rate of devaluation you should be getting around ~$7.60 officially (5.31% per mensem based on December 4th to January 4th). This will likely leave the dollar blue around ~$12.24 (6.29% per mensem based on December 5th to January 5th) BUT I doubt the government would let that happen so the dollar blue in my opinion might float around the hight 10.XXs. This of course is pure speculation and I'm not great at math but I wouldn't be surprised if this is the situation you find yourself in.

As others said, do what they suggested and sell your CRISP, NEW BENJAMINS on Florida Street.

 

[ElQueso]

If you have extra pesos when you go back, some expats who live here and get dollars in somehow might be willing to buy the pesos from you when you leave, at a decent rate. It's expensive to go the other way - to sell your pesos to a blue market dealer in exchange for dollars (or euros, reais, etc). The more pesos you want to sell on the blue market the more expensive.

 

[thomsono1912]

If you have extra pesos just buy few bottles of top notch vino and sell them back home. I figure a norton Classico costs 25ars here, it's worth $20 at home (90ish% difference), just spend what you have on $500ars bottles of vino and you will get the official rate and then some. Or in the very least, a few nice bottles of wine. Or buy some nice leather goods, some expensive shoes, a box of alfajores, cigars... Anything. Much better than bringing back toilet paper

 

[John.St]

As Rich One and ARbound hint above, make sure your US$ are
1. Clean
2. Whole
3. Not repaired in any way
4. Not written upon

A tear, a single piece of tape or any writing can render a US$ bill worthless in South America, but - as you are about to find out for yourself - peso bills can be torn, overwritten, repaired, dirty, etc. and still be valid